The humble story of Don Quixote: reflections on the birth of the modern novel

VII. From Don Quixote’s Penitence to the Episode of the Lion

c h a p t e r v i i From Don Quixote’s Penitence to the Episode of the Lion What is more I say that when any painter wishes to win fame in his art, he endeavours to imitate the pictures of the most excellent painters he knows....... In the same way, Amadís was the pole star, the morning star, the sun of all valiant knights and lovers, and all of us who ride beneath the banner of love and chivalry should imitate him....... Have I not told you—replied Don Quixote—that I intend to imitate Amadís, and to act here the desperate, raving, furious lover, in order to imitate at the same time the valiant Sir Roland.......? It seems to me—said Sancho—that the knights who did things like that were provoked and had a reason for their follies and penances. But what reason has your worship for going mad?...... That is the point—replied Don Quixote—and in that lies the beauty of my plan. A knight errant who turns mad for a reason deserves neither merit nor thanks. The thing is to do it without cause....... So, friend Sancho, do not waste any time advising me to give up so rare, so happy, and so unprecedented an imitation. I am mad and mad I must be till you come back with the reply to a letter which I intend to send by you to my lady Dulcinea....... 153 [And] I would have you know that all these things which I am doing are not in jest, but very much in earnest. Otherwise I should be infringing the laws of chivalry, which bid us tell no lie....... Therefore the blows on my head must be real, hard, and true, without any sophistry or deception. So, Sancho, for what I want of Dulcinea del Toboso, she is as good as the greatest princess in the land. For not all those poets who praise ladies under names which they choose so freely, really have such mistresses. (1.25.202–10) Don Quixote’s model is radiant Amadís, “the pole star, the morning star, the sun of all valiant knights and lovers.” However, his explanation should not fool anybody, nor should we make light of it and charge it all to Cervantine irony without further ado. Don Quixote’s imitation of Amadís clearly goes far beyond the limits of a master-apprentice relationship. In a genuine healthy relationship between master and apprentice there is a third element, the object of the imitation (the painting, in Don Quixote’s own example), with a reality of its own, independent from both master and apprentice. The latter imitates the former only in reference to that particular object, the reality of which sets limits to the imitation itself. But this is not the case in Don Quixote ’s fascinated imitation. There is no independent reality between model and imitator. To be a good knight errant is not to do something as well as Amad ís would do it. To be a good knight errant is to be like Amadís. This model does not tell his imitator “Watch me do this or that,” but rather “Watch me,” “Be like me.” That which is to be imitated is anything at all that the model does, feels, or even thinks. To be the best knight errant is to do, feel, think exactly like Amadís. “Amadís lives in me as I live in Amadís,” the faithful chivalric disciple could very well say. So what if Dulcinea del Toboso is not real? Why should that change anything ? Don Quixote is perfectly willing to grant that Dulcinea’s existence may be purely poetic. That does not change the absolute necessity in which he believes he is of having her as the object of his chivalric love because that absolute necessity of his is dictated by Amadís, not by empirical reality in any shape or form. Dulcinea is just as real as she has to be for the imitation of Amadís to be genuine. For that is the only thing that has to be genuine and true, the only thing with which Don Quixote cannot compromise. In the final analysis, the only thing that has to be real for Don Quixote to be Don Quix154 From Quixote’s Penitence to the Episode of the Lion ote...